The Vietnam War Did war prove to be a successful means of achieving Essay

The Vietnam War Did war prove to be a successful means of achieving political objective Examine this from both the US and North Vietnamese perspectives - Essay Example It is â€Å"an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will†¦ War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.2 The Vietnam War was initially a conflict between two new countries that came out of the French colonization of Indochina. But, the US intervention led to a change in the circumstances. In the end, the essential reality of the struggle, wrote Hendrik Hertzberg in his book, Politics (2005), â€Å"was that the Communists, imbued with an almost fanatical sense of dedication to a reunified Vietnam under their control, saw the war against the United States and its South Vietnamese ally as the continuation of two thousand years of resistance to Chinese and later French rule.† (p. 37) Although there are three main players in the Vietnam War: North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the United States, there is the important addition of the Soviet Union as an actor and to a certain degree, China, that the Vietnam War came to be characterized by the conflict of two factions, the Communist and the US-South Vietnam alliance. On the Communist side, there is North Vietnam, Soviet Union and China. Here, the Vietnamese communist is holding the center stage. The Vietnam War was said to be an undeclared war between the Soviet Union and the United States or an extension of the Cold War, with Vietnam as the battleground of the West and the Communists war for global influence. The strategy in this regard is that these major powers were involved in their war against each other using the weaker countries as a battleground. In this approach, their troops are kept at a minimum and that they – the US and Soviet Union - are protected, themselves, from risk of direct attack. The Vietnam, was primarily a conflict between the North and the South for control over

Architecturall theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Architecturall theory - Essay Example ntellectual context in thinking about architecture and the final built work is intrinsic to the understanding of how ideas reoccur, and even old theories have relevance today. Despite its past and present history, the aesthetic beauty and practical usefulness of theory remains a positive and necessary influence on the subject, and the discourse created by it an important element in the future growth and evolution of architecture itself. A good theoretical starting point is undoubtedly Lucas Koolhass and his theory of The Generic City—an idea significantly [and we might assume coldly] modern in its tendency to accept the twentieth century axiom of form follows function--‘generic’ as in having no particularly distinctive quality or application. In essence, nothing in terms of urban architecture should be written in theoretical or historical stone. Koolhass, the Dutch architect, architectural theorist and urbanist suggests that in approaching urban design we â€Å"stop looking for glue to hold cities together† [in the old thinking, town squares etc] and simply allow the place to develop as natural needs apply, where the only judgments are â€Å"taste† and â€Å"aesthetics† (Grà ¶nlund, The Generic City par 4). Removing the sociological component, The Generic City then is one that does not rely on history for its identity and disputes old notions of â€Å"endless repetitions o f the same structural module...more varied boredom, [and] redundancy...† (Grà ¶nlund, The Generic City par 2). But Koohaas does not leave the architect completely without options. He is simply providing a realistic backdrop that allows the professional to judge and create his work from a modern more clinical standpoint. In a1991 lecture at Rice University, Koolhaas, in pointing out â€Å"the constant movement that occurs between documenting and critiquing the phenomena to trying to interpret what they mean to architecture...† explains how his approach to writing and theorizing â€Å"work in tandem